I Wouldn't go neither way ;-)...

A command line switch will force the programmers to decide which mode the program is to be executed in. That's getting rid of the option to switch between meeds if needed in the program.

What are the gaols here? Do we want to set this text mode once and for all for the whole program? Or do we want the ability to switch at will depending on the specific text manipulations we want to do? Basically switching to pure console and sdl much like we switch from text mode to graphics mode? we can switch modes already IE we can change resolution anytime we need to between graphic modes or go back to text mode.

Perhaps something like _Console and _Sdl could be used to swatch between the two. or _Console Text and _Console SDL.

A metacommand is another problem because it is typically used once too. Not a good idea to use a meta command and all that meta command to be called from anywhere. So i think a statement (whichever it may be defined as) is the only visible option if we're aiming for the flexibility described above.

And before anyone asks, it wouldn't be much work, I don't think to allow to switch between SDL and Pure Text like this. just a matter of setting the console to the right mode and calling SDL based or Text based console functions internally. :-)>